Officer Darlene Ranck escorted George Lonnie McDaniel, 27, to TMI’s security office to be questioned for violating the plant’s Fitness-for-Duty Program.

Ranck and Officer Greg DeHoff asked McDaniel to empty his pockets.

The Jessup, Ga., resident pulled a small plastic bag of marijuana from his pocket, and plant security officers called the Pennsylvania State Police, according to an affidavit filed with District Justice David H. Judy in Dauphin County.

McDaniel’s job at TMI did not grant him access to vital areas of the plant. Currently, Dauphin County has a fugitive warrant out for McDaniel’s arrest. He could not be reached for comment for this article.

Between July 1999 and December 2002, 143 workers and applicants for work at Three Mile Island and Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station tested positive for drugs or alcohol, according to biannual Fitness-for-Duty reports.

The York Daily Record obtained the reports from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Drugs listed in the reports include marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines and alcohol.

All the people tested had or were applying for unescorted access to vital areas of the plants.

Many were short-term workers, such as McDaniel, or were applying for similar jobs. Such workers travel the nation, from power plant to power plant, to work when reactors are shut down for refueling.

State Rep. Bruce Smith, R-Dillsburg, said he was disturbed by the number of positive drug tests reported by TMI officials.

“There is no excuse or any way to defend substance abuse at a nuclear power plant,” he said.

Smith said he plans to contact the NRC and acquire the plant’s Fitness-for-Duty reports for his own records.

A Daily Record investigation found:

· More people might have tested positive, but the NRC does not have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to chemical testing. The commission uses cutoff limits to screen for narcotics and alcohol. For example, the NRC’s limit for alcohol is a blood-alcohol content of 0.04 percent. That is equivalent to three 12-ounce beers in an hour for a 200-pound man.

·Applicants for short-term contracting work made up the majority of those who tested positive at both Peach Bottom and TMI unit 1 in Londonderry Township, Dauphin County. Short-term contractors generally handle maintenance and repairs that cannot be completed when the plant is on-line.

· Workers’ inability to cope with stress following the terrorist attacks may have contributed to the largest single six-month jump in marijuana use among plant workers since July 1999. For both plants, 73 people tested positive for marijuana — the most of any intoxicant.

Keeping fit for duty

In 1989, the NRC created a policy that each plant should follow an individual fitness-for-duty program.

Collecting such data helps ensure that workers complete their jobs free of any physical or mental impairment such as drugs, said Neil Sheehan, commission spokesman.

Twice a year, each plant files a report with the commission that details how many workers tested positive for legal or illegal substances.

The commission examines the data for trends in drug use among plant workers, Sheehan said.

“It acts as a performance indicator of a plant,” he said.

If a plant reports two or more fitness-for-duty program failures, the NRC will increase its level of oversight.

An example of a program failure could be a worker and plant physician working together to falsify screening results. Program failures could translate into increased inspections and possible fines, Sheehan said.

In 2001, the NRC hosted a specific investigation into whether a former commission- licensed chief shift operator at the Nine Mile Point Nuclear Station in New York had deliberately provided false, inaccurate, or incomplete information on health history forms.

The investigation uncovered that the operator deliberately failed to provide complete information on the forms in order to mislead an officer.

The fitness-for-duty violation case did not result in a fine, but the NRC could have issued a base civil penalty of $55,000.

Neither Peach Bottom nor TMI Unit 1 has been cited for a fitness-for-duty violation.

Test limits

Rather than have a zero-tolerance drug policy, the NRC relies on cutoff levels to test if a person has abused drugs or alcohol.

For example, the NRC’s limit on marijuana is 100 ng/ml — about the equivalent of smoking one joint in a week.

At those levels, it is possible that a worker could endanger himself, fellow employees and the community, said Jim Beek, a public information officer for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

A division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, SAMHSA sets guidelines for workplace drug testing for the NRC.

The level of impairment depends heavily on a person’s sensitivity to a specific drug, Beek said.

Since most “street drugs” like marijuana and cocaine are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, it can be difficult for experts to determine the strength of the drug, Beek said.

“When someone takes a hit off of a joint, you don’t know how or when it might affect them,” he said. “They could end up losing an arm or blowing up Delta, Pa.”

From her living room, Marianne Adamski of Goldsboro has a view of TMI’s water cooling towers billowing steam.

She said the lack of a zero-tolerance drug policy for plant workers is “scary.”

“They should regulate it much better than that,” Adamski said. “They should be more responsible than that.”

The NRC’s use of cutoff levels rather than zero tolerance is based on decades of research, Sheehan said. Studies indicate that drugs in quantities below the cutoff levels are not likely to affect job performance.

For example, a plant employee who must report to work at 4 p.m. Monday and has cocktails Sunday night should not be affected by the alcohol once he reports to the plant, Sheehan said.

“You might have a small amount of alcohol in your body, but based on evidence, it will not impair your ability to do the job effectively,” Sheehan said.

One expert claims a zero-tolerance drug policy does not account for human digestion and passive exposure involving marijuana.

The human body produces alcohol as a process of digestion, said Robert Stephenson, head of the SAMHSA Division of Workplace Programs.

That amount of alcohol is below the level of impairment but above zero, Stephenson said.

Marijuana can stick to clothes and hair, he said.

If a person walks through a room where people are smoking marijuana, it may mean that they were exposed to second-hand smoke rather than ingesting the drug.

“Zero tolerance means that we won’t tolerate one free bite of the apple,” Stephenson said.

Another hurdle that laboratories must traverse in the quest for a true zero-tolerance drug test is technology.

Many drug cutoff levels exist essentially to test how far down the screening equipment can reach, said Dr. Carla Huitt.

“Much of the equipment can’t accurately measure down to zero,” said Huitt, medical director of the Industrial Resource Center at Memorial Hospital. “Below the cutoff level, they are just making an assumption that the person is not impaired.”

Regardless of the equipment, doctors cannot determine how an illegal drug will affect one person compared to the next.

Marijuana, the most common drug found in plant workers, can remain in the body for up to a month, Huitt said.

Fitness offenders

On a regional level, most nuclear plant workers who tested positive for drugs were short-term contractors who work the sites during refueling.

Between July 1999 and December 2002, 91 short-term contractors at Peach Bottom tested positive for drugs. At TMI, 45 temporary employees tested positive.

The remaining seven workers who tested positive for drugs at both power plants were licensed employees.

A licensed worker is someone who has been certified by the NRC in their job and works at the plant full time.

One reason for the unbalanced figures could be that Peach Bottom has two operating reactors that require double the manpower, compared to the needs of TMI’s lone unit, Sheehan said.

Typically, plants temporarily hire hundreds of short-term contractors for repairs and maintenance when reactors are shut down for refueling.

For example, short-term contractors have been involved with the installation of a reactor vessel head at TMI since Oct. 18. The plant’s unit 1 reactor is currently shut down.

“There really is no need to keep a staff that size on permanently,” said David A. Lochbaum, of the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit environmental group.

Power companies have the month-long outages every two years to conduct inspections, change out spent fuel rods, upgrade equipment and perform preventive maintenance that is difficult to complete while a plant is operational.

Since 1990, when the average refueling outage lasted 60 to 75 days, the industry has pushed to reduce the number of days the power plants are down, Lochbaum said.

The more time a reactor is offline, the longer a plant goes without supplying power to the electrical grid — its main business.

“They make their money when the plant is running,” Lochbaum said. “Plant operators began to hire additional workers to get the required repairs completed in half the time.”

But more workers means more drug screenings and a greater potential for positive chemical tests, Lochbaum said.

Most of those who fail the plants’ drug tests are pending hires who are being screened for the first time and have not yet been assigned to the protected area, he said.

For those workers who actively take drugs and make it to the protected area of the plant, specific safeguards exist to expose that person’s habits to security.

Exelon Nuclear operates a computer program that randomly drug tests 50 percent of a plant’s staff on an annual basis, said Hugh McNally, regional security manager for Exelon Generation.

The process deters people from taking drugs under the assumption that a random test could take place at any time, he said.

For example, the computer could randomly select a worker who was tested for drugs on Monday to be screened again on Thursday of the same week.

“I could be tested three times in a year,” McNally said. “Personally, I’ve been tested twice in one week.”

As part of the plant’s training process, new workers are instructed to recognize the symptoms of narcotics use and must report any changes in behavior they notice in other employees.

Failure to do so could result in a worker losing his job, McNally said.

“If I smell alcohol on someone’s breath,” he said, “I need to report it to my supervisor.”

At the drug test, a worker must list all the prescription medications he may be taking.

The employee must fill a container with urine, McNally said. The worker is allowed to complete the four-minute test in a bathroom in private, but the employee is not permitted to run any water or flush the toilet.

“We try to have a lot of controls in place so a person can’t beat the system,” he said.

An onsite laboratory tests the samples.

If a worker’s urine screens positive for drugs, the plant sends the sample to an outside laboratory for complete verification.

Exelon temporarily denies the employee access to the protected area of the plant.

Once the outside laboratory has confirmed the test, the plant’s medical review officer makes a final determination.

The commission requires a nuclear plant to restrict a worker’s access to protected areas for at least 14 days.

“For most people,” Lochbaum said, “that means they lost their job.”

The plant may request a worker complete drug and alcohol counseling before the employee can return to the plant.

Plant officials make the final determination whether to reinstate the employee’s access to the protected area or to fire the employee, McNally said.

Access is automatically denied for three years if a person screens positive a second time, he said.

A failed drug test could hamper a person’s chances for a new job, Lochbaum said.

Power companies enter information relating to the failed test into a national database that is monitored by all power plants.

“It’s a red flag that you lost unescorted access privileges to the plant,” Lochbaum said. “If you violated their drug policy, you’ve kissed your job goodbye.”

Spike in marijuana use

Between July and December 2001, 10 TMI workers tested positive for marijuana while 20 Peach Bottom employees screened positive for the illegal drug — the largest single six-month jump since July 1999.

By contrast, no workers at Peach Bottom tested positive for marijuana during the previous six-month period. At TMI Unit 1, three people tested positive for the drug during that period.

Aside from fall refueling outages that require more workers, the jump in drug abuse may be attributed to stress. The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks happened during the six months when the spike occurred.

Generally, an unstable political and economic climate can elevate stress to the point where a person could turn to drugs as a coping mechanism, said Helen Gyimesi, a drug and alcohol prevention specialist for Memorial Hospital.

“These are mood-altering drugs,” she said. “Working in a place like that after 9/11 could be scary.”

Reach Sean Adkins at 771-2047 or sadkins@ydr.com.